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Stephan Hammes
Creative director and designer
stephanhammes.com“‘Three ideas’ is what I used to do in
agencyland with eager account people, to
show that the client was getting their
money’s worth. Annoyingly, clients often
thought they could mix-and-match, so I’ve
changed my approach as an independent.
The body of my presentations still has
three parts, but they’re differently
structured: only one concept in response to
the brief, but two ideas for the execution – a
clear recommendation and a strong
alternative. One should be able to agree on
the solution first and give the client then a
binary choice of the implementation. If you
can’t agree on the concept you either
misunderstood the brief or the client didn’t
mean what they briefed. So you don’t need
to discuss the execution.
I find it helpful to separate substance and
style. To test if I have a robust concept I’ll
ask myself if I could get it across over the
phone. Ideally, the realisation of it is then a
logical step, but sometimes this can be
matters of taste, which are hard to discuss.”
Amy Kilner
Creative lead, Hotshot Agency
hotshot.agency“When I receive a brief, I always offer at
least three ideas to clients – each with
different approaches so that all angles are
covered. The first will hit the brief as closely
as possible, which is what the client would
want and expect to see.
With the second option I like to add a
sprinkle of my own design style and offer
my opinion on how I think it could work a
little better; either to stand out against
competitors or just evolve into more than
just the initial design. This could be
something as simple as translating a
concept through animation if the main
outcome is static, for example.
The final option (and usually the most
fun to work on) is what I call the wild card.
This is something that’s different to the
client’s expectations, but still has the
potential to reach the project objective. As
creative professionals, thinking the opposite
of what’s expected is sometimes the risk we
need to take, and this is what makes the
industry we’re in so exciting.”Lee Davies
Creative director, Peter & Paul
peterandpaul.co.uk“Our studio works primarily in the creation
of brand identities, but we’ve learned that
no two briefs are the same, so the answer
to this question is dependent upon the size
of the job.
Sometimes clients come to us with a
clear idea of what they’re offering. Our job is
to create a visual identity. There’s more
than one way to skin a cat, so providing the
team have had some strong ideas, we may
put forward two or three of those. (It’s
important to say that we only do this if
there are good ideas to present. We don’t do
the safe/weird/favourite option thing.)
Other times our briefs are far more open.
Occasionally, clients come to us with a
broad business idea and our job is to do
deeper strategy work to define who they are
and who they’re talking to, for example.
We’re creating a brand and as such, we
present some thinking before we get into
design. Therefore, doing design options
seems irrelevant. We present one option- the one that best delivers on the strategy.”
CYNTHIA WILLIAMS
One. And then if the client
has other ideas, maybe you
can run the back-up designs
if any. Or keep them on file
for future jobs, or your
portfolio if it’s folio-ready.@LEIGHWOOSEY
Four: safe option; risky
option; somewhere between
risky and safe option; and
a curveball.@ABELL_DESIGN
Why spread your effort over
three designs when you can
channel it all into one
showstopper? Also prevents
the disaster of the client
selecting the wrong design.STEVE THOMPSON
Swans come in ones and
twos, vultures come in packs
of six-plus. Nuff said.@SHREXIS
Three options. One to be
refused, second to impress
and the third to be approved.CULTURE
discuss
HOW MANY IDEAS SHOULD YOU PRESENT TO A CLIENT?